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IPS55 Hermann H. et al.
The recognition of the importance of agency credibility and public trust in
official statistics is of course found in the Fundamental Principles. This
document states, inter alia:
“To retain trust in official statistics, the statistical agencies need to
decide according to strictly professional considerations, including
scientific principles and professional ethics, on the methods and
procedures for the collection, processing, storage and presentation of
statistical data.”
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the oversight agency of the
federal government, while recognizing the importance of trust, also
emphasized the role of professional independence and professional judgment
in generating that trust. This was codified in OMB Statistical Policy Directive
2
No. 1 . The Directive states that the four “Fundamental Responsibilities” of a
federal statistical agency are: (1) “produce and disseminate relevant and timely
information,” (2) “conduct credible and accurate statistical activities,” (3)
“conduct objective statistical activities,” and (4) “protect the trust of
information providers by ensuring the confidentiality and exclusive statistical
use of their responses.”
3
Since 1992 the Committee on National Statistics of the National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has issued a periodic report
4
on Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency . These reports echo
the importance of the Fundamental Principles and the OMB principles to the
US statistical system and they note:
“To be credible and unhindered in its mission, a statistical agency must
maintain a widely acknowledged position of independence from
undue external influences. It must avoid even the appearance that its
collection, analysis, or reporting processes might be manipulated for
political purposes or that individually identifiable data collected under
a pledge of confidentiality might be turned over for administrative,
regulatory, or law enforcement uses.”
It is important to note that both the Policy Directives issued by OMB and
the Principles and Practices developed by the Committee on National Statistics
(CNSTAT) introduce a concept not used in the Fundamental Principles. That
concept is independence. It can be argued that Fundamental Principle 2
relating to decisions by statistical agencies based solely on scientific and
professional considerations implies independence. However, both OMB and

2 Federal Register, Vol. 79, No. 231, p.71612 (December 2, 2014).
3 Ibid. at pp.71614-71615.
4 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017). Principles and Practices
for a Federal Statistical Agency, Fifth Edition, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
https://doi.org/10.17226/24810.
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